The centimeter that changed the course of history

Trump is far from holding all four stoic values. But yesterday his courage came calling.

There are now two images of President Donald Trump that evoke intense reactions from almost everyone. The first appeared last year when his mugshot was posted as he voluntarily surrendered after being indicted on racketeering charges at the Fulton County Jail.

“Never Surrender!” he posted on X at the time - his first and only post since his account was deactivated in 2021 before being restored.

The next image was to come 11 months later on stage in Pennsylvania as a gunman aimed at his head and took a shot, grazing his ear and leaving the former president bloodied but defiant; fist pumped in the air as he was escorted off stage.

The assassination attempt on Trump’s life was shocking, but it ‘exists in the context of all that came before it’: presidential assassinations and their attempts are engrained in American history. Trump joins former presidents Ronald Regan and Theodore Roosevelt who have now all been hit.

“I hope you’re all Republicans,” President Regan said to doctors on the operating table before having surgery to remove his bullet.

“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot,” President Roosevelt said as he addressed a crowd with a speech so long its thick papers were what shielded his body from certain death.

“Fight! Fight!” President Trump yelled through the arms of Secret Service agents.

They say true character is revealed in adversity. Well, arrests and gunshots will do just that.

These images of Donald Trump are now undoubtedly more famous than his official presidential portrait. They exist to show future generations the character of a man who was impeached, arrested, fined, convicted, and now shot at - all to return to a job he doesn’t need, and that has caused him countless legal problems and literal threats to his life.

While it is wise to suggest Trump is far from holding all four stoic values (his temperance is limited), yesterday his courage came calling. He remained defiant and lived up to his enduring self-declared post-presidency messages: to ‘Never Surrender’ and ‘Fight!’‘

The extraordinary photos now shared across the world are making his return to the White House all but an inevitability. Whereas many were desperate to write him in the history books as a convicted felon or insurrectionist, these two images together paint a different picture of bravery and resilience.

This isn’t to say the media denied us a chance to once again roll our eyes at their coverage. The assassination attempt was reported in some news outlets who aren’t yet aware of their own demises. USA Today referred to the gunshots as ‘loud noises’, NBC News called them ‘popping noises’, the Los Angeles Times said Trump was ‘whisked off stage’, and finally CNN reported that the Secret Service took him off stage after he ‘falls’.

The early reporting was another '“fiery but mostly peaceful” moment from a media ecosystem determined to undermine Trump and delegitimize itself in the eyes of the American public. Their attempts to disguise or misinterpret events in the past may have worked but in today’s X-first landscape, they are caught playing catch-up with citizen journalists who report with accuracy on Musk’s platform.

The actions taken on Trump were on the back end of an increasingly hysterical media storm in an election cycle that saw The Washington Post recently compare him to Hitler and The New Republic warning his second presidency would lead to ‘American Fascism’. At the same time, outlets were dismissing videos of Biden’s cognitive decline as ‘Cheap Fakes’ - a narrative that was to fall apart just one week later at the debate.

On the campaign, current President Biden has been fearmongering his supporters into believing Trump would implement ‘Project 2025’ - something Trump has consistently disavowed. Last week the president said “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye” as he struggled to reignite his own failing campaign and restore public trust in his ability to serve a second term.

Biden’s X account posted that he was “grateful” to hear Trump was doing well and that he was “praying for him”. But if I were to choose two images defining Biden’s term in office, I would select these:

Last night’s rally was another historic moment for American elections and the world. A centimeter of space saved Trump’s life - and perhaps prevented America from falling into an all-out civil war.